LEVENS Choir’s 40th anniversary season draws to a tremendous close with a magnificent concert of music from 19th Century Germany and Renaissance Italy.

Inspirational conductor and founder Ian Jones and his eminent choristers celebrate four decades of wonderful music-making at Kendal's St George’s Church on Saturday, July 9 (7.30pm), sharing the spotlight for the grand occasion with the English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble.

As for the programme, the resonant acoustic of St George’s Church will ring to the sounds of Anton Bruckner alongside masters of the Italian Renaissance.

Bruckner's unaccompanied motets are well known and popular among choral singers and audiences. Less known, but even more spectacular, are the accompanied ones and when joined by the trombones of the celebrated ECSE they could easily ‘raise the roof.'

The sackbut players of ECSE are all equally at home playing trombone, and as individuals are regularly invited to perform with many of the leading UK and European orchestras. In a first for both Levens Choir and ECSE they will perform on both sackbut and ‘Romantic’ trombones of the Bruckner period.

The second half of Saturday's concert will feature the ensemble's cornetts performing Renaissance music by Claudio Monteverdi, Tomas de Victoria and Giovanni Gabrieli. Additionally, the cornetts will ring out in tunes from Monteverdi’s famous Vespers of 1610 and in Gabrieli’s In Ecclesiis for soloists and double choir.

The English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble is a virtuoso period instrument ensemble with a host of distinguished recordings to its name. Since its formation in 1993, the ensemble has performed at many major music festivals worldwide. As well as sell-out concerts at London’s Wigmore Hall, St John’s Smith Square and the Purcell Room it has also performed at the York Early Music Festival, Bath International Festival, Spitalfields Festival, La Folle Journée, Grundton D, and the International Izmir Festival and, in 2015, in Zagreb with the Croatian Radio Television Choir in a live broadcast of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610.

ECSE has visited Australia, Turkey, Florence and Antwerp with the renowned solo-voice ensemble I Fagiolini, and joined them in Venice in November 2015 for a performance of Monteverdi's l'Orfeo in the remarkable Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista.

ECSE has been involved in many quality recordings, including The Madrigal in Venice, a large-scale recording of Andrea Gabrieli’s madrigals with I Fagiolini. A further CD collaboration with I Fagiolini, the world premiere recording of the momentous 40-part mass Ecco si beato giorno by Alessandro Striggio, scooped both the Gramophone Award for Early Music and the Diapason d'Or.

ECSE's latest release is a collaboration with vocal ensemble Alamire. Entitled The Spy's Choirbook, the CD won the 2015 Gramophone Award for Early Music.

When not appearing with ECSE, its members perform individually with some of the world’s leading period instrument groups, as well as providing music for plays at venues such as Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre on London’s Bankside, Hampton Court Palace.

The ensemble is also keen to encourage amateur cornett and sackbut players and has set up the ECSE Academy. Last September, two members of the group ran a hugely successful weekend workshop at Cartmel to coincide with, and support, the village’s Magna Carta 800 celebrations, culminating in several performances in the magnificent Cartmel Priory.

Tickets are available from Kendal's Brewery Arts Centre on 01539-725133.